Metro’s park & ride crackdown: Did it work?

King County Metro’s new enforcement program, launched this summer to crack down on park and ride cheaters and provide more parking for legitimate users, is working. But there’s still a ways to go.

RELATED: Metro cracking down on park-and-ride violators

KIRO 7 obtained the latest data on warnings Metro has issued to people for violations such as parking in areas that aren’t spots, parking in fire lanes and parking at park and rides for free and then going elsewhere.

The new program focused on four popular park and rides: Eastgate, Northgate, Kingsgate, and Redmond.

Data showed 216 warnings were issued. We found 80 percent of the warnings were at the Eastgate Park and Ride.

“You drive around in circles for 30 minutes, just trying to see if someone is leaving,” Desmond Lee said. He used to park at the Eastgate Park and Ride before switching jobs.

“You have to get here, I would say, before 9 o’clock, for sure,” Dakota Pollard, who uses the park and ride each week, said.

After receiving complaints from customers, King County Metro recognized there was a problem. And Eastgate was a great example of it.

“Some people from nearby colleges or businesses were being charged to park where they were going, so they were finding our parking free,” King County Metro senior transportation planner Daniel Rowe said.

Commuters were parking wherever they could.

“I can see cars parked in spots that are not spots,” Lee said.

Starting in June, Metro started issuing warning notices. The first and second are free, but with the third, your vehicle is towed.

“Do you think this is working?” KIRO 7 reporter Linzi Sheldon asked Rowe.

“Yes. So, over the four months, we’ve been running the program so far, we’ve issued about 200 warnings,” he said, “and we’ve only issued a couple repeat warnings, 15 total repeat warnings. So, to us, that’s a sign that customers are getting the message on the first warning.”

Redmond, the smallest park, and ride, had the lowest number of warnings, at four. Kingsgate had 22 and Northgate had 17. Eastgate, which has about 100 more spaces than Northgate, had 173 warnings.

“Does that surprise you?” KIRO 7’s Linzi Sheldon asked Lee.

“That’s an insane amount,” he said. “I can see that, though.”

KIRO 7 asked for a breakdown of the data by month and discovered the warnings have not been steadily declining.

The graph shows a spike in the first month of enforcement, then smaller numbers of warnings over the summer until another spike in September. Rowe said there are two likely contributing factors.

“One is, in general, transit ridership and park and ride use tends to dip in the summer,” he said, explaining that college students are out of class and people are going on vacations with their families.

He said because of several supervisors being promoted, Metro had fewer staff members available to check the lots for violations and issue warnings.

But now that it’s fall, “we’re seeing the warnings jump up a little bit,” he said.

Based on our past reporting, KIRO 7 identified another likely reason for more warnings at Eastgate: The nearby South Bellevue Park and Ride lot closed on May 30th.

A map shows the South Bellevue Park and Ride is just 2.4 miles from Eastgate and its closure eliminated more than 500 parking spots.

Indrasanti Santosa has experienced the current parking crunch with her son.

“I came here with him a few weeks before he started school and then I couldn’t find a parking space,” she said.

Metro plans to continue enforcement. And drivers who actually use the park and ride for transit, as Santosa does, have a message for cheaters.

“People who park here and go somewhere else, please don’t do that!” she said.

People are getting the message about tows after being warned. Metro hasn’t had to tow anyone for parking and going elsewhere or for parking in spots that aren’t actually spots.

But seven vehicles have been towed for offenses such as parking 72 hours or more, or for emergencies, such as leaking fluids or blocking the fire lane.